Training can change public perception of call centre staff

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Divinia Fernandes Esch of Savant People Development - who was ranked number one in the World for Best Trainer at the Contact Centre World Awards in Las Vegas in November 2013 - said that many contact centre employees are either inadequately trained, or not trained at all, as far as ensuring that they understand what exactly constitutes a risk or fraudulent transgression, and what the consequences are thereof, of committing such transgressions.

These are critical elements that need to be incorporated as part of any training programme that is facilitated within organisations, as failure to do so will have significant ramifications for both employees and organisations alike.

"There is no question that aggressive and unethical sales practices, as well as deliberate fraud is being committed by sales agents, and has had a direct influence on how they are perceived by the public."

Ethical agents

"The reality, however, is that there are ethical, hard working and principled telesales agents who are honourable, and view their role as a career, and not simply a job. Unfortunately, these individuals have to bear the repercussions of dealing with clients who have lost confidence and trust in doing business telephonically, due to having had past dealings with unscrupulous individuals who give the industry a bad reputation," said Fernandes Esch.

Fred Steffers, managing director of payment systems company PS&S, said that in some cases crooked telemarketers submitted payment lists for which they did not have valid mandates to deduct money from unsuspecting consumers. "These bogus instructions resulted in the debit orders having to be reversed at some considerable cost to my company and other payment systems operators."

PASA chief executive, Walter Volker, said a full-scale effort was under way to weed out the rotten apples in the industry that resulted in more than 120,000 of the 31 million payment orders processed monthly being disputed by consumers.

Uninformed consumers

Both Volcker and Steffers made the point that relatively unsophisticated consumers were at the greatest risk because they lacked the knowledge of how to dispute illegal debit order deductions which often required several telephone calls to both the banks and the telemarketers who often refuse to reverse the deduction.

Steffers said if a consumer detected a fraudulent deduction on their bank statement, the first step should be to demand a copy of what is termed a mandate. In the event of a telemarketer, this would be in the form of a recorded version of the telephone conversation, where the consumer explicitly authorised the telemarketer to deduct the payment from his bank account.